


What Is and What Should Never Be

by theladyscribe



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Dead Hockey Players, Gen, Haunted Stanley Cup, Pittsburgh Penguins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5076643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody told Zhenya that the Stanley Cup came with its own ghosts, but then again, most of the hockey players he knows don't even have an inkling of the Sight. He first sees them when he takes the Cup from Bettman, kissing it and lifting it above his head even as the crowd swells to include the shimmer of other Cup Final crowds. There's a knot of ghostly players, too, all but one of them grinning wide, banging their ghostly sticks against the ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is and What Should Never Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brutti_ma_buoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/gifts).



> Title is from the Led Zeppelin song. Thank you to S for the speedy beta and H for the title help.
> 
> Warning: non-graphic description of a major character's off-screen death.

Nobody told Zhenya that the Stanley Cup came with its own ghosts, but then again, most of the hockey players he knows don't even have an inkling of the Sight. He first sees them when he takes the Cup from Bettman, kissing it and lifting it above his head even as the crowd swells to include the shimmer of other Cup Final crowds. There's a knot of ghostly players, too, all but one of them grinning wide, banging their ghostly sticks against the ice.

They disappear as he passes the Cup to Talbo, but the feeling of them stays like the bright white of an after-image.

He catches glimpses of them again and again throughout the night as the Penguins celebrate their win, but Zhenya's never alone and never with the Cup long enough to try to talk to the ghosts. He thinks he recognizes some of them, maybe, from game footage and photographs. He wonders about the one that doesn't smile — he looks familiar, but Zhenya can't quite place him. He shakes it off, letting Duper and Kunitz pull him back into the party.

*

He sees the ghosts again on his Cup Day, and this time he gets introductions. There’s Archie Hooper and Edgar Dey and Owen McCourt from the early days, all dead from on-ice injuries; Newsy Leswick who swears up and down he was murdered by mobsters because he wouldn’t rig the championship; Barilko who’s weirdly proud his death spawned a rock song; and Sid, killed in an accident the winter before his draft.

Zhenya isn’t sure if it’s just because the other guys have been dead longer, or if it’s because Sid didn’t actually _win_ the Cup, but Sid refuses to talk to him.

“Eh, don’t worry about it, kid,” Barilko says to Zhenya when he asks about it as they ride a limo through town to the first stop of the day. “He was like that even before he died.”

Zhenya glances over at Sid, who looks like he wants to say, “I was not!” but knows it would just make the others tease him more.

Zhenya shrugs. “If he’s not want to talk, he doesn’t have to.”

*

He goes through his Cup Day as planned, the ghosts just a bonus part of his entourage as he visits students at the hockey school and his old high school and parades the Cup across the ice before the Metallurg game.

At the end of the night, he's exhausted, but the flight back to Moscow is so early that he's decided to stay awake, to spend his last hours on the ice with the Cup, alone but for the ghosts, who fade in and out as they zip around the ice with him.

Zhenya's doing lazy laps around the rink when Sid finally starts to talk to him. The other ghosts have disappeared; Zhenya doesn’t know if maybe they’re just giving the two of them privacy or what, but he doesn’t really care.

"That's supposed to be my Cup," Sid says, voice petulant. "I was going to be a Penguin."

The announcement makes everything click into place, and Zhenya remembers — Sidney Crosby, the boy who was supposed to be the Next Great One, fell through thin ice while playing pond hockey and drowned. Zhenya had heard about it, because they would have been teammates, but he'd been too busy with trying to escape his Metallurg contract to care.

"Sorry."

Sid sighs forlornly. "It's alright. You did good. I wish I could have played with you."

Zhenya doesn't quite know what to say to that, so he settles on, "I'm wish we could play, too."

Sid pushes in front of him, turning so he skates backward in time with Zhenya. "Maybe we can."

He furrows his brow and then goes blurry for a moment before appearing in full hockey gear, stick in one hand and ghostly puck in the other. Zhenya isn’t sure how he does that, but he’s not going to ask, splitting off to fetch his own stick from the bench.

They face off a little to the side of the Cup, and Sid lets Zhenya win it. When the puck touches Zhenya's stick, he hears the roar of a ghostly crowd, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see their audience, dressed in an array of fashions from the last century. It distracts him long enough for Sid to steal the puck back.

Zhenya spins and gives chase.

**Author's Note:**

> All of the hockey ghosts (except Sid) mentioned in the story are from Wikipedia's [list of hockey players who died during their playing career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ice_hockey_players_who_died_during_their_playing_career) (which is morbid but fascinating).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [What Was and Will Forever Be (The Ten Ghosts, One Cup Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056802) by [kinetikatrue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinetikatrue/pseuds/kinetikatrue)




End file.
